Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. (NYSE:DPS) early Tuesday [Feb 14, 2017 | 8:08am ] posted worse than expected fourth quarter profits and offered a tepid outlook for 2017, as it navigates an increasingly competitive environment.

Written by StockNews.com

The Plano, TX-based beverage giant reported Q4 EPS of $1.04, which was $0.02 worse than the Wall Street consensus estimate of $1.06.

Revenues rose 2.1% from last year to $1.58 billion, matching analysts’ $1.58 billion view.

DPS noted that the sales increase was due to a favorable product and package mix, a 1% gain in sales volumes, and higher pricing.

Looking ahead, Dr Pepper Snapple forecast full year 2017 EPS of $4.44 to $4.54, well below the $4.75 that analysts are looking for. 2017 revenues are seen rising about 4.5% to $6.73 billion, however, which is above Wall Street’s $6.69 billion view.

Finally, DPS expects organic volume growth of 1%, and total volume growth of about 2% for the current year.

The company commented via press release:

DPS President and CEO Larry Young said, “I’m proud of our teams and the strong performance they delivered in 2016. In a continuously competitive environment, we remained focused on our integrated communication and execution strategies and unlocked growth across our priority brands. We recently completed our acquisition of Bai, which will strengthen our priority brand portfolio and bring exciting innovation opportunities to the company. We also remained relentlessly focused on driving growth and productivity across our business with Rapid Continuous Improvement.”

...Year-to-date, DPS has gained 3.11%, versus a 4.13% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.

DPS currently has a StockNews.com POWR Rating of A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #3 of 25 stocks in the Beverages category.